Page 5 of The Words We Lost

If you’re reading this letter, then we’ve all had a pretty big shock. Although mine ends with streets of gold and treasures far more valuable than any my beloved pirate friends ever managed to discover. I’m sorry I can’t send you any pictures. On that note, I’m sorry I couldn’t stick around a little longer. I wanted to.

I’m sure you’re wondering what this letter is all about and why I had Lloyd wait to deliver it until a few months after my heavenly housewarming, and I promise, I’ll get to that. But there are a few things I need to say first.

Losing someone dear to me has always been at the top of my fear list. Perhaps my only real-life experience with grief is wrapped up in an absentee father who didn’t deserve the tears I shed for him as a young girl. But when I close my eyes today and force myself to try and replay the best moments of my life without either one of you in them...the pain that brands itself onto my chest is nearly unbearable. And yet I know you are both well-acquainted with this kind of loss, the same kind I’ve never been brave enough to face outside the pages of my fiction. And for that, I’m the most sorry.

During these last few years, I never lost hope that the two of you would find your way back to each other again—or that the three of us would be reunited as if we’d never been apart. After my surgeon told me the risks involved in the surgery to remove my brain tumor, my priorities became clearer while my options grew fewer. There are things I promised myself I’d be brave enough to do long before now. And yet now is all I have left.

I’ve read that it’s not advised for those who are grieving to make any big decisions within the first year, but I couldn’t make you wait a year for something I wish I could have given to you sooner. I asked Lloyd to hand-deliver this letter to you three months after my death in hopes that you’d be open to receiving something I’ve set aside for you both. Something outside the parameters of my estate. Something far more substantial than my words in this letter.

I’m asking you to put your differences aside and retrieve a packageI’ve left in the care of my trusted attorney. Lloyd will give you my instructions from there. I love you.

Yours always,

Cece”

There’s a slight tremor to Joel’s hands when he lowers the letter to his lap. And once again, when our eyes meet, neither of us utters a word. I don’t even know how to begin to process what I just heard. But I do know I absolutely cannot process it alone with Joel.

On restless legs, I ease away from my desk and pace the length of my window that overlooks the back alley of a sandwich shop and two bakeries. My office isn’t large by any stretch, but it’s big enough to house a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf, an L-shaped desk, and the Peloton bike I couldn’t fit into my tiny studio apartment after Dr. Rogers prescribed cycling as a part of my therapy. I study it now, wishing it wasn’t mounted to a go-nowhere stand. Wishing even more that it could take me far, far away from here.

“Seven months,” I murmur, trying to wrap my brain around it. “That letter has been sitting in a dusty file cabinet for seven months?”

To his credit, Joel doesn’t look any less stunned than I feel. “Apparently so.”

“This is crazy.” I continue to pace. “People don’t just leave random packages for their friends to retrieve after they’ve...” I don’t finish.

“People? No. But it’s not as if Cece’s ever been the conventional type,” Joel amends. “The longer I sit with it, the more on-brand it feels for her.”

I hate how accurate his statement is, but Joel knew his only cousin as well as I knew her, which also happens to be as well as we knew each other once upon a time.

“This coming Saturday would have been...” Joel trails off, swallows, tries again. “Her twenty-seventh birthday.” A date I’ve done my best to pretend doesn’t exist, because Saturday will also markten months to the day Joel called to tell me her surgery wasn’t successful. “My parents are hosting a dinner in her honor that night.”

It doesn’t take much imagination to visualize the kind of tribute the Campbells might be hosting in honor of their late niece. The parties they’ve held at their hotel have always been memorable, meaningful occasions. Grand end-of-summer soirees, formal dinner affairs at the pier, outdoor family seafood nights sprawled across dozens of picnic tables overlooking the Sound.

“It’s invite-only. Just friends and family.” Joel stands and tucks his hands into his pockets as he watches me pace. “They’d welcome you, Indy. We all would.” Without taking his eyes off me, he adds, “I know Cece intended for us to read this months ago, but the timing of this has to be more than coincidence. She always did prefer giving gifts on her birthday over receiving them.”

It takes work to stop the barrage of memories his words have provoked, to realize that Joel assumes my decision to return to Port Townsend for a package neither of us knew existed until today has already been made. It’s as if he thinks Cece’s request—which was obviously made out of a guilty conscience, seeing as no one knew the true odds of her procedure—is enough to cause me to forget everything else Port Townsend represents. But there is more than one tragic death hovering in the fissure between us, and while Joel had nothing to do with the outcome of his cousin’s surgery, he will forever be the last person to see my father alive. He will forever be the last person to speak to him mere moments before he boarded the Campbells’ charter boat and died alone at sea. And he will forever be the one person I trusted enough to care for the only family I had left before it was too late.

A truth that’s haunted me almost as much as the hurt I buried after walking away from Joel on his family’s dock five years ago.

“Unfortunately,” I say with as much conviction as I can summon without looking at him, “I won’t be able to make it up this weekend. It’s a busy season here in publishing, and I need to stay close tothe office.” I try not to think about Cece’s mother, Wendy, as I add, “Please give my regrets to your family.”

“Cece asked us to collect the package together, Ingrid.”

“I know what she asked, but I don’t see any reason why we’d both need to be present. I trust Marshall can oversee the process and contact me about the contents.” I cross to my desk again and reach for a pen and the memo pad that says:Edit or Regret It. “I’d be happy to sign something so you can collect it without me—some kind of permission slip.” With a slight tremble to my fingers, I scrawl out the words: I, Ingrid Erikson, give permission for Joel Campbell to receive the package from Cecelia Campbell addressed to us both.I date the memo and sign my name near the bottom before tearing it from the pad. “Please tell Marshall he’s welcome to contact me if he needs anything more.” I hold it out to Joel, but he makes no effort to retrieve it.

“That’s not what she wanted.”

I tamp down the desire to blurt,“Look around! None of us got what we wanted, Joel!”and instead I say, “As I said, it’s terrible timing for me. I can’t get away right now.”

His jaw flexes twice. “You’re telling me you can’t taketwo daysover aweekendto honor your best friend’s last request and attend a birthday dinner? Maybe I’m missing something here, but that really doesn’t seem like too much to ask of a woman my cousin called her best friend for over a decade.”

His accusation lashes through the tender scar tissue of an old wound, exposing a hurt I’ve worked to shield for years. I narrow my eyes as heat flares in my chest. “And I really don’t think you’re in any position to judge me on what it means to honor a friend’s request—last or otherwise.”

The acute flicker of pain in his expression forces me to bite the insides of my cheeks so I won’t take the words back. But even still, my insult doesn’t stop whatever pre-programmed autopilot our bodies were set to long before this unplanned visit. There seems to be no off switch as the space between us thins enough for my spine to tingle with a sensation I swore I banished half a decade ago. Whenhis focus downshifts from my eyes to my mouth and then finally to the fabric of my blouse concealing a tattoo that rests just below the ridge of my left collarbone, I actively remind myself to keep breathing.

“Aren’t there enough regrets stacked between us, Indy? Please don’t let this be another one.” His emotion-laced question curls around my ribcage and squeezes with the strength of a python. “Come home.”

My throat begins to burn right as the familiar tap of a nail on my office door breaks us apart.

---